


i held the bouquet in shock (and cut the stems at a deadly angle)

by crocs



Category: Constantine (TV), Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Gen, mild spoilers for end of defenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 23:23:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12641421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocs/pseuds/crocs
Summary: There's a woman that Karen doesn't recognize at Matt's funeral.She wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't just the three of them in the church.





	i held the bouquet in shock (and cut the stems at a deadly angle)

 

 

There's a woman already sitting in the church when she gets there. She's wrapped in a black shawl. The crows are squawking outside. Matt's dead in a ditch somewhere, and wasn't that a dark thought?

 

It's a shame that her life is the way it is because that the ﬁrst thing that runs through Karen's mind is _'damn, Matt, how many secret_ _and_ _mysterious badass girlfriends_ did _you have while you were alive?'_

 

When she clacks her thrift shop heels down the aisle and sits down in the wooden, old pew in front of the woman, she doesn't expect her to lean forward and whisper a short greeting with minty breath.

 

Wasn't church supposed to be silent, for reﬂection? Or was that libraries?

 

Screw it, decides Karen.

 

"How well did you know Matt?" she asks the woman now self-identiﬁed as Zed, leaning back, and Zed blinks.

 

"Oh," she says, and smiles the same smile that Karen sees too much in the mirror and the microwave door nowadays, grim and taught and tight, and with just a pinch of genuineness. "I didn't really know the deceased that well. We once worked on a case together."

 

But well enough to be one third of Matt's grieving party.

 

She's lying. Karen knows the feeling well.

 

Knows the signs well.

 

Also, Foggy sounds like he's choking in the pew in front.

 

Karen accepts the plain, faded handkerchief that Zed pushes towards her discretely, and dabs her eyes.

 

"What are you here for, then?" she asks, red nails tapping on her leg.

 

"The coffee," says Zed, deadpan, and Karen snorts through her wet tears.

 

Zed's eyebrows raise, and laughs roughly too, and hell, Karen hopes Matt can see them now, and know that the main reason she's basically screaming in her seat into a borrowed square of ratty fabric is that her own life has been the joke for too long.

 

Foggy twirls a tiny green rubber dinosaur around his ﬁngers, deep in thought and grief, and carries on like he can't hear them cackle like hyenas together.

 

* * *

 

They bury an empty casket, Karen and Foggy and Father Lantom and the mysterious Zed.

 

* * *

 

"Foggy and I are getting drinks after this," she mentions when the service is over, and Father Lantom has made them all cappuccinos with his new machine that was mysteriously donated (which, now that Karen thinks about it, has blind catholic vigilante lawyer Matt Murdock all over it). "You want to come with us?"

 

Foggy stiffens next to her. Zed shakes her tresses as she stands up.

 

"I have plans, sorry," she indulges, grabbing her bag. "Did you see a smoker wearing a trench coat and generally skulking about outside?"

 

Karen almost shakes her head no, but then remembers a man leering at her and Foggy on their way through the graveyard, cigarette between ﬁngers and deep in argument with a cab driver at the same time.

 

"He's a good friend. A dick, really, but a good friend. Probably would have said hi if Father Lantom didn't kick him out for smoking. I'm not going to desert him in New York City. He raises actual Hell even when I'm already looking. Plus," she adds, pulling on her shawl where it slipped in the cold wind, "you two will probably make me drink the eel. Josie's, right?"

 

Karen nearly says yes, in shock, because there must be a billion bars in New York, but Zed's brushing past her coat and halfway through the old door by the time she opens her mouth.

 

"Does it get any better?" Karen almost pleads, instead. She has killed a man, before. But the blood is not on her hands as it usually is, and trying to claw back with pink bitten down nails all of the blame of Matt's death into her corner is a losing game.

 

She can remember the feeling of Matt's horns digging into her hands when he'd shown her it. The mask. It's not unlike what's happening to her soul, today.

 

Zed stops and shakes her head.

 

"I'll let you know when I find out," she says, and makes her way out of the church into the cold street, battered old black briefcase clutched too-tightly in hand.

 

* * *

 

At Josie's, Foggy ﬁnally tells her the story, through beer and later pink-drinks-with-umbrella goggles, of how the great Avocados met Zed Martin, who apparently could tell the future, when they were in college. Along with an immortal cab driver named Chas and the master-of-the-dark arts himself, John Constantine. And how they fought a demon together.

 

Jesus.

 

Then Josie begrudgingly regales them with how Chas died in her bar, impaled by a bar stool, and came back to life. Karen doesn't believe a word, on the outside.

 

On the inside, she's cursing Matt's name and wondering why the hell this was her life. They'd certainly seen stranger things.

 

(Foggy renames her in his phone to 'Agent Scully', and when she drops him back at his swanky corporate lawyer apartment, he leans in close with alcohol-stained breath and shirt and weaves into the story how Zed was Matt's rebound after Elektra, and Karen, once again, wonders if Matt has -- had -- a type. She dumps him on the sofa with his goddamn dinosaur and walks home by herself, Danny watching over her and the city in Matt's empty spot in the dark and cold night.)

 

When she ﬁnally gets to her apartment, she reaches around in her pocket for her keys in the ﬂickering yellow light of the corridor, and instead produces two very foreign items.

 

Number one -- rough, coarse in her hand -- is a business card, cream colored and small with sharp edges like a knife. She turns it over. It reads:

 

_'John Constantine:_

 

_Exorcist, Demonologist and Master of the Dark Arts._

 

_(404) 248 – 7182'._

 

The number is circled in blue pen, and the word 'Master' is crossed out and replaced with 'Petty Dabbler', and so Karen enters it into her phone for later use.

 

Lucky item number two is also rough and coarse and yellowed, but it's folded and not cardstock and when Karen touches it she immediately recognises it as ripped out sketchbook paper. She unlocks the door with the paper still folded up between her middle and her ring ﬁngers.

 

Sits down; unfolds it; drops it in shock.

 

Picks it back up.

 

Karen looks at the detailed charcoal portrait of herself, Matt and Foggy in front of the ofﬁces with a keen reporter's eye, because it's an exact replica of the photo of a simpler time that she keeps on her bedside table.

 

Her ﬁngers shake as she pries her charcoal-printed thumb away from the date it was drawn -- two whole months before the picture itself was taken.

 

Scribbled on the back in the same blue pen as the business card is two words, signed: _call me - Z.M._.

 

* * *

 

Karen talks to Zed and Constantine the following morning.

 

She also learns that Matt is still alive, which is a plus.

 

 


End file.
